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Saoirse

 

 

 

Graduated. I thought I’d feel elated. Excited, maybe. I thought I’d feel something. Except I just felt…hollow. Lost.

I sat at our small kitchen table, staring off into nothing, my mind a whirr, my future a blank landscape. What do I do now? What the hell do I do with my life?

If Diarmuid was here, he’d know. My chest squeezed as I allowed myself to miss him more than usual. God, would it ever get any less painful?

A banging on the door jolted me. I whipped my head to the front door. Then to the clock. Ten past nine in the morning on a Sunday.

“Who the fuck is that?” my ma called from her bedroom.

Who the fuck was it, indeed?

The piece of toast I’d been clutching dropped back onto my plate, and I pushed back from the table with a scrape of the chair legs. I brushed my hands of crumbs as I tiptoed to the door. Debt collectors? One of my ma’s boyfriends? Neither prospect felt good to me at all.

The door banged again, this time harder.

“Saoirse? Open up,” a male voice called from the other side of the door.

Me? Whoever was on the other side of that door wanted me.

For a split second, I thought it might be Diarmuid, finally returned to take me away from this place. As soon as that hope was lit, it was extinguished.

Stupid girl. He doesn’t sound anything like Diarmuid. Diarmuid’s voice was deep but almost lyrical. This man on the other side of the door, whoever he was, sounded rough and jagged. He sounded older than the few male friends I made in school. Well, not friends really, more guys who occasionally pestered me to “come over”.

Who else would it be?

My ma stumbled out of her room, tugging a ratty bathrobe over her underwear. “Don’t open it.”

I rolled my eyes. They were after me, not her. In an act of defiance, or perhaps I was just so damn bored with life as it was that I’d stopped caring about being cautious, I unlocked the door and flung it open.

Standing there was a man who seemed familiar. Or perhaps he just seemed that way because he looked like almost every other forty-something-year-old Irish man. He had a shaved head, tats peeking up from his leather jacket collar, his fist raised to knock again.

He lowered his fist, his eyes roaming over me, but not in a way that made me uncomfortable. He grinned as his eyes found mine, blue and rimmed with wrinkles when he smiled.

“Saoirse fockin’ Quinn, in the fockin’ flesh, Jesus Christ, all grown up, like.”

I blinked at him. I frowned at this intruder, his face tickling my memory.

My ma gasped from behind me. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

He knew my name. My ma knew him. Which meant… “How do I know you?” I asked.

He held his arm out to the side. “Jase O’Malley. Yer pa’s best mate.”

The memories slotted into place. I nodded. That’s right. My pa and he were as thick as thieves when we lived back in Limerick before my da was locked up and my ma fled with me to Dublin. But he had a thick head of dirty blonde hair back then.

“Uncle Jase,” I said.

He grinned wider, revealing a silver-capped canine among crooked teeth. “That’s right.” His eyes rolled over me again. “Jesus, lass, you’ve grown up nice, like. I remember when you were crawling around in nappies.”

Behind me my ma was hissing. “Go away, Jase.” She grabbed at the door, trying to shut it in his face.

Jase stuck out a beefy hand to stop her. He shot her a glare. “Still being a bitch, I see, Patricia.”

“Fuck you.”

“No fockin’ thanks, love. The years have not been kind to ye.” My ma spluttered and howled behind me. Jase ignored her and turned towards me, an affectionate smile stretching across his face. “Get your shit, Saoirse. You’re coming with me.”

“No, she is not,” said my ma. “She’s not going anywhere with you.”

Jase ignored her. “Pack a bag, quick as ye can, girl. We gotta go.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, backing up into the house. Already deciding that I’d go with him. Wherever he was going, I didn’t care. I’d go anywhere. Anywhere from here. Here was a chance to move forward. To move on. Wherever he was taking me, it’d be better than this fucking hole I was stuck in.

He grinned. “To go pick up your pa. He gets out of prison today.”

My ma gasped behind me. “That fucker.”

Jase looked up to her and glared at her. “He don’t want to see you. Just her.”

My da was back.

He promised he’d come get me when he got out.

“Give me ten minutes,” I yelled out at Jase and ran into my room.

I grabbed my backpack, the one that Diarmuid bought me, still as sturdy as the day he bought it, and laid it open on the bed. I grabbed the most important thing first. My journal that I hid under the slip of my mattress, tucking it into a pocket carefully before grabbing clothes and throwing them in after it.

My da promised he’d come back. He kept his promise.

My stomach jumbled with nerves. Things would be different now. They’d be better.

My ma grabbed my arm. I hadn’t even heard her come in. Her mascara-smudged eyes were wide, anger making her nostrils flare.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

I yanked my arm out of her grasp and zipped up my backpack. “You’ve never cared about me. Don’t start pretending you do now.”

Her mouth opened. “How dare you speak to me like that.”

With the backpack over one shoulder, I shoved past her towards Uncle Jase, who was standing just outside the open front door, smoking a cigarette. He was going to take me to my da. I couldn’t wait.

“If you go to that bastard you can never come back ’ere.”

“Thank fuck,” I yelled back.

I would walk out of here and never look back.

I stopped on the level down and told Jase I’d meet him at his car. I knocked on Moina’s apartment door. When she opened the door, her kind, ruddy-cheeked face softened by soft pale curls peering out, I explained that my da had finally come for me and that I was leaving.

“I knew this day would come, girl,” Moina said as she gave me a fierce hug. “I just didn’t think it’d be so soon.”

I squeezed her back just as hard. “I’ll miss you. Thank you for everything.”

It was about a two-hour drive from Dublin to Limerick. I sat in the passenger seat of Jase’s car, my stomach tumbling as the green Irish countryside rolled past once we got out of the outskirts of Dublin.

“So, girl,” Jase said, “what are you, twenty, twenty-one now?”

I glanced over to him. His eyes kept flicking to my legs stretched out in front of me, then to my chest, making me want to fold my arms across them. His reaction didn’t surprise me.

“I’m seventeen,” I said clearly.

His eyes widened. “Oh, yeah, right.” He looked back to the road. “You don’t look seventeen,” he mumbled.

Wasn’t that the truth. When I was thirteen I would have done anything to look older. Now that I was seventeen, I’d do anything just to look my age.

As we drove closer to Limerick, my guts began to knot up. I’d not seen my da in almost five years. My ma wouldn’t let me visit him in prison and we moved to Dublin pretty soon after he was put away. My ma wouldn’t even let me go to court with her when he was being tried for drug possession and distribution.

Five years. A lot had changed in five years. I had changed in five years. I imagined five years in prison would have changed him, too.

Limerick hadn’t changed, though. I eyed the familiar streets of my childhood as we rolled through town.

When I was younger, I’d lived with my ma in a council flat in an area south of Limerick. My da had been in and out, living mostly on a property in rural county Limerick, visiting us maybe once every two weeks or so. I’d looked forward to those visits as if they were Christmas. In a way, they had been. My da always brought something home for me, whether it was a new doll or sweets.

We pulled up in front of Limerick prison, an imposing grey stone building. Standing in front of the big green door was my da. Reddish-brown hair, wide jaw and beefy nose. In his mid-forties, he looked so much older than I remembered, wrinkles fanning out from his eyes as he smiled.

Jase pulled up and bounced out of the car, walking right over to him and giving him a quick hug and slaps on the back.

I was slower in unclipping my seatbelt and getting out of my seat, hanging back as the two men eyed each other up.

“Liam,” Jase said, calling my da by his first name, “how are ya, ye fucker?”

“Grand, yeah, now that I’m out of that fockin’ shitehole.”

“Jesus, you look good. Been workin’ out, yeah?”

“Nothin’ much else to do in there.”

“Ah, truth.”

My da looked up and spied me hanging around the car. He looked like the man of my memories—strong jaw, stubble, and a few more lines around his green eyes, the only physical characteristic I inherited from him. I looked like my ma, but my eyes I got from my da.

The smile from my childhood broke out across his face and my chest warmed. “Jesus Mary Joseph. Is that my little girl?” He took two strides up to me. “Look at ye. All grown up.”

“Hi, Da,” I said, my voice going all quiet.

“Why you gone all shy, huh? Give yer old man a hug.” He closed his arms around me and I was enveloped in familiar smells: tobacco and Old Spice.

I swallowed down the knot in my throat as I held onto him. I didn’t realise how much I had missed my da. He was the only man who’d ever kept his promise to me.

I’ll come back for ya, baby girl. Promise.

“Jase told me about the state of the place he found you in.” My da pulled back to look at me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be there for ye while I was in jail. But I’m here now, you hear me?”

He clasped his beefy hand around my neck. I nodded, my throat constricting.

He grinned. “Good. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

 

 

 

Jase drove up to a small two-level terraced house in Dooradoyle, an area of Limerick. It had a grey and white façade, a small patch of garden at the front growing wild and tall with dandelions and weeds.

We pulled up into the short driveway beside a black motorbike. A figure moved out from the alcove of the front entrance. A man, looking to be in his early twenties, ambled over to the car with his hands thrust in his pockets, a grin on his face. He had dirty blonde hair styled in a mess, a lean body in dark skinny jeans and a black leather jacket, a cheeky grin spread across stubble.

My da and Jase got out of the car. I clambered out of the back, grabbing my backpack, all my worldly possessions.

“Malachi, lad,” my da said. “Jesus, you’ve bloody grown, too. How’s your old man?”

They clasped hands and did that one-shouldered man-hug. I spotted Malachi whispering something to my da. Da nodded and jerked his head towards Jase. Something unspoken seemed to pass between them.

“Malachi,” I heard my da say, “here are the keys. Show my daughter to her room.”

“Yes, sir.” Malachi looked over to me and our eyes met, interest flaring in them. He grinned as he walked around the car to me.

“Hey.” He nodded to me as he came to stand near me, a little too near for someone I just met, in my opinion. “I’m Malachi.”

“Saoirse.”

His grin widened. “I know.”

“Malachi,” my da called. He looked over to us and grinned, a stark contrast to the words that next came out of his mouth. “Touch her and I’ll fockin’ kill ya.”

Malachi raised up his hands as if in surrender, but he, too, was smiling.

Men are strange.

Malachi grabbed my backpack off me and nodded towards the front door. “Follow me, princess.”

He took me through the house. It was a little rundown, the old carpet had lost most of its pile and the air was a tad musty from being shut up, but it was cosy: a living room, kitchen and toilet downstairs, three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Malachi showed me to one of the bedrooms, holding the door open for me so that I had to brush past him to get in. He smelled like cigarette smoke and a sharp, spicy cologne.

He handed me my backpack and I unzipped it on the bed, feeling his eyes on me.

“So,” Malachi said as he leaned against the doorway all casual like. “You got a boyfriend or something?”

For some stupid reason Diarmuid’s face flashed across my mind. “Nope.”

“Good.”

Good? I raised an eyebrow at him. He grinned back without any self-consciousness.

I folded a jumper in the drawer, making a note to buy some mothballs the next time we were in town. I didn’t have a car but would definitely need one if I were to stay here. Dooradoyle was at least a fifteen-minute drive from the city centre. I wondered if my da would let me use his car. If I was going to get work in town, then I’d have to have a car.

A twinge of sadness went through me when I thought of not getting to study this year.

College was technically “free” in Ireland, our fees only three grand per year. But those fees weren’t going to pay themselves. Neither would the textbooks and a secondhand computer I’d need to do my coursework. And I still needed to “live”. I’d not be able to work and save as much if I was studying. Although maybe now that my da was here, he’d help support me.

I let out a sigh. Anyways it was too late for college this year. The application deadline was well past. I couldn’t apply until next year.

“That was a big sigh.”

I almost forgot that Malachi was still here, watching me from the doorway.

I shrugged. “Just stuff on my mind.”

“Like what? What could such a pretty girl like you have to be worried about?”

“University.”

He let out a snort. “Don’t think you’ll be needing that shite.”

“If I want a good job—”

“I thought you were going to work with your da.”

I blinked at Malachi. My da wanted me to work with him?

Malachi’s mouth dropped open. “Oh shite. He hasn’t spoken to ye about it?”

I shook my head.

Malachi gave me a sheepish look. “Well, act surprised when he does.”

“Malachi,” a voice called up to us from somewhere in the house.

Malachi looked over his shoulder. “I’m going to head down. See what they want. I’ll see you soon, yeah? Maybe I can show you round on my bike.”

“You have a bike?” That must be his bike out front. Maybe a bike licence would be easier than a car licence. A bike would be cheaper to buy and to run.

He grinned, looking a tad smug. “Yeah.”

I nodded. “That’d be grand, yeah, thanks.”

He shot me a wink before he left. I turned back to my unpacking in peace, feeling a rush of relief at being alone again.

It took me only a minute to unpack my meager clothes into a chest of drawers. And stick my toiletries into a shared bathroom.

I threw myself across my new double bed. A double bed all to myself. How luxurious. I’d only ever slept on a single bed. And damn this mattress was soft. I couldn’t feel the springs in my back.

Maybe this was my new start. My new beginning. I could throw off the young, naïve Saoirse that I’d been and start as a new woman. I could get a job here. Earn some money. Save. Apply to study next year.

Maybe, for once life was giving me a break.

I allowed myself a smile and a small rush of hope and possibilities.